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Luc Verhaegen is out with another insightful blog post about ARM's "Midgard" architecture, ARM MPD still being rather closed-up, cites a recent Q/A about ARM's Jem Davies commenting on Linux drivers, and how ARM vendors hide behind Linaro...

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I think AMD has a big opportunity here to join the mobile market with their GPUs that already have open source drivers, and either x86 or ARM SoCs...

IMO, as a non-dev, simple user, ARM itself is a big, closed mess, and it would be awesome to have open source (although non-free) GPU drivers (+ video decoding) in the smartphone/"mini-pc" world. I've wanted to do many things with these tiny SoCs, but the closedness makes it not worth. I also don't see how that is changing.

And thanks to libv for calling them on their hypocrisy about their code being "open source"...

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So which ARM vendor is the most open about their GPU (and has the best FOSS graphics drivers) today?

I was about to ask something similar, but only the GPU isn't enough. The answer to the above is probably Qualcomm's Adreno due to Freedreno, but from what I've gathered Qualcomm uses an incredible amount of proprietary bits in the kernel, including things like modem that happens to have access to much of the entire system, that makes it unworkable. They also don't release any specs whatsoever, even the most basic ones. So while the GPU state is nice, everything else is a mess.

So my question would be which ARM SoC is the most FOSS-friendly overall. Looking at the alternatives, I think it would probably be Samsung Exynos at this point, or NVIDIA Tegra (albeit I don't know how may proprietary bits besides the GPU that one uses). Broadcom open-sourced VideoCore code for the Raspberry Pi hardware, but that's a single device and already very old and weak. I haven't heard much either way about NovaThor, but they did use to use PowerVR graphics, so probably not that good either.

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I was about to ask something similar, but only the GPU isn't enough. The answer to the above is probably Qualcomm's Adreno due to Freedreno, but from what I've gathered Qualcomm uses an incredible amount of proprietary bits in the kernel, including things like modem that happens to have access to much of the entire system, that makes it unworkable. They also don't release any specs whatsoever, even the most basic ones. So while the GPU state is nice, everything else is a mess.

Qcom is a bit difficult in some ways, but I'm not aware of any closed kernel part. There are some closed fw parts needed for bootloader. It isn't really that much different from, for example, omap HS device (ie. what you found in phones/tablets). Even stuff like video enc/dec has open src userspace. And I am starting to get patches from qcom for drm/msm. It's early days, but they seem to be trying to do the right thing.

I do wish they had an non-NDA TRM available. If you buy a dragonboard/ifc6410/etc, there are apparently docs available, but with EULA terms that scare me off. Maybe less of a problem for someone not writing an open src gl driver for their hw..

So my question would be which ARM SoC is the most FOSS-friendly overall. Looking at the alternatives, I think it would probably be Samsung Exynos at this point, or NVIDIA Tegra (albeit I don't know how may proprietary bits besides the GPU that one uses). Broadcom open-sourced VideoCore code for the Raspberry Pi hardware, but that's a single device and already very old and weak. I haven't heard much either way about NovaThor, but they did use to use PowerVR graphics, so probably not that good either.

If you care about gpu, then cross exynos off the list. Although feel free to write a letter to whoever you would have bought an exynos board from explaining that you are purchasing a different board so you can have open graphics drivers. Some indirect pressure on arm via samsung would be useful.

The new nvidia stuff benefits from nouveau, and on the mobile side of things nvidia seems to be playing nicely with the community. Broadcom still has some parts (at least for what is in the current r-pi) which are abnoxiously closed.. but hopefully if they move to a more sane system architecture in future devices, those bits will kinda go away. Etnaviv is pretty far along, so I think anything with (for example) freescale iMX6 would be a good choice.

I do wish more folks in the community would vote with their wallets, at least when it comes to community boards. Today, I think that list would be (in no particular order): bcom (r-pi), qcom (ifc6410, etc), tegra (jetson), and anything with vivante (iMX6 can run upstream kernel.. so utilite or cubox-i).

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Qcom is a bit difficult in some ways, but I'm not aware of any closed kernel part. There are some closed fw parts needed for bootloader. It isn't really that much different from, for example, omap HS device (ie. what you found in phones/tablets). Even stuff like video enc/dec has open src userspace. And I am starting to get patches from qcom for drm/msm. It's early days, but they seem to be trying to do the right thing.

I do wish they had an non-NDA TRM available. If you buy a dragonboard/ifc6410/etc, there are apparently docs available, but with EULA terms that scare me off. Maybe less of a problem for someone not writing an open src gl driver for their hw..

As for Exynos, they used to use PowerVR graphics, but they are now largely using ARMali. As mentioned by libv, it's not the best thing ever, but at least Lima exists and they don't have quite as many proprietary blobs for the other parts.

As for Exynos, they used to use PowerVR graphics, but they are now largely using ARMali. As mentioned by libv, it's not the best thing ever, but at least Lima exists and they don't have quite as many proprietary blobs for the other parts.

true, when lima actually becomes a GL driver, I would recommend exynos devices with mali (but not ones with powervr). Until then, it is not terribly much use to anyone who isn't working on a FOSS GL driver.